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Pique   Listen
noun
Pique  n.  A cotton fabric, figured in the loom, used as a dress goods for women and children, and for vestings, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pique" Quotes from Famous Books



... Bordeaux, where his letters of recommendation, as well as his large fortune, gave him an entrance to the salons of the nobility. His wife contributed greatly to maintain him in the good graces of an aristocracy which may perhaps have adopted him in the first instance merely to pique the society of the class below them. Madame Evangelista, who belonged to the Casa-Reale, an illustrious family of Spain, was a Creole, and, like all women served by slaves, she lived as a great lady, knew nothing of the value of money, repressed no ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac

... he were going to be chary with his praise," thought Helen, feeling just the least bit uncomfortable. She thought for a moment, and then said, not without truth, "You pique ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... return you the Quarterly Review, uncut and unopened, not from disrespect or disregard or pique, but it is a kind of reading which I have some time disused, as I think the periodical style of writing hurtful to the habits of the mind, by presenting the superfices of too many things at once. I do not know that it contains any thing disagreeable to me—it may or it ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... said sternly, leaning out toward him and looking Barney in the eyes, "don't be a fool. The man that would, from pique, willingly hurt a friend is a mean ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor

... would vindicate both at a stroke, for a sign. Nevertheless, he had been behaving cruelly. She charged on him the guilt of the small preludes, archeries, anglings, veilings, evasions, all done with the eyelids and the mute of the lips, or a skirmisher word or a fan's flourish, and which, intended to pique the husband rather than incite the lover, had led Mrs. Lawrence Finchley to murmur at her ear, in close assembly, without a distinct designation of Mr. Morsfield, "Dangerous man to play little games with!" It had brought upon her this ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Christopher Glowry, Esquire. This gentleman was naturally of an atrabilarious temperament, and much troubled with those phantoms of indigestion which are commonly called blue devils. He had been deceived in an early friendship: he had been crossed in love; and had offered his hand, from pique, to a lady, who accepted it from interest, and who, in so doing, violently tore asunder the bonds of a tried and youthful attachment. Her vanity was gratified by being the mistress of a very extensive, if not very lively, establishment; but all ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock

... the banquet [that or which] he gives notice of."—Philological Museum, i, 454. Sometimes the objective word is put first because it is emphatical; as, "This the great understand, this they pique themselves upon."—Art of Thinking, p. 66. Prepositions of more than one syllable, are sometimes put immediately after their objects, especially in poetry; as, "Known all the world over."—Walker's Particles p. 291. "The thing is known all ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... was younger I found I often misrepresented the intentions of people, and that they did not mean what at the time I supposed they meant; and further, that, as a general rule, it was better to be a little dull of apprehension where phrases seemed to imply pique, and quick in perception when, on the contrary, they seemed to imply kindly feeling. The real truth never fails ultimately to appear; and opposing parties, if wrong, are sooner convinced when replied to forbearingly, than when overwhelmed. All ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... of our morals develops in the young girl whom you make your wife a curiosity which is naturally excessive; but as mothers in France pique themselves on exposing their girls every day to the fire which they do not allow to scorch them, this curiosity ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac

... an indifferent person," said Lucy, with some pique, and laying a particular stress on those words, "that your judgment might justly have such weight with me. If you could be supposed to be biased in any respect by your own feelings, your opinion would not be ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... explain myself in my next. I shall set out tomorrow morning for the Hot Well at Bristol, where I am afraid I shall stay longer than I could wish. On the receipt of this send Williams thither with my saddle-horse and the demi pique. Tell Barns to thresh out the two old ricks, and send the corn to market, and sell it off to the poor at a shilling a bushel under market price. — I have received a snivelling letter from Griffin, offering to make a public submission and pay costs. I want none ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... stage of the proceedings, that the chief object of the prince's admiration was the lady Dewbell, who, proud as she was, could not help feeling flattered by the evident and special devotion of one for whom the whole of her sex were dying. Sir Timothy Lawn, who, from pique or melancholy, or from some unknown cause, had left the court the very day after the arrival of the new prince, was not entirely forgotten, but was laid away carefully on a back shelf of her heart; and the lady Dewbell never had been so beautiful, so fascinating, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... girl's dislike for him was an iron that entered the quick of his vanity anew every time he saw her. There was no petulance in the aversion, such as he had perceived with other maidens who were only resenting a passing negligence or seeking to pique his curiosity. This was a steady and, if you will, unmaidenly aversion, which Maggie conscientiously ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman

... before we part: even the 'servant' may presume to counsel his 'master' as he is quitting his service. The landlord within is not one of those landlords who pique themselves on courtesy: and the gentleman tourist, with submission be it said, is not one of those tourists who travel with four horses,—or even by the stage-coach: and foot-travellers in England, especially in the winter season, do not meet with 'high consideration.' ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... each day more and more estranged, Felix loved to labor with the youth in the tasks to both congenial. That Cesarine should grow jealous would be natural, but it was pique that she felt toward Felix. In Antonino, she saw the possible instrument of her vengeance. His good looks, fervid temperament, youthful impressionability, all conspired in her favor as well as the innate artistic craving ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas

... another sneer that makes her quiver with fear and rage—"to account for Adrian's decided and almost lover-like attentions to her in the room we visited, that you had had a lovers' quarrel with him some time before, earlier in the day; that, in his fit of pique, he had sought to be revenged upon you, and soothe his slighted feelings by feigning a sudden interest in her. ...
— The Haunted Chamber - A Novel • "The Duchess"

... beauty; at three-and-thirty she was still unmarried, her looks on the wane, but her romance stronger than ever, not untinged perhaps with a little bitterness towards that sex which had not afforded one man of merit enough to woo and win her. Partly out of pique with a land so barren of all that could minister to imagination, partly in anger with her brother who had been urging her to a match she disliked, she went abroad to travel, wandered about for a year or two, and at last found herself one winter ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... by storm. He fairly carried us away. He was eloquent, and that with a simplicity which made one question whether he did not speak out of some pressing personal experience."—Katherine's manner was touched by a pretty edge of pique.—"Really I believed I knew all about Julius and his doings by this time, but it seems I don't! I think I must find out. It would vex me that anything should happen in which he needed sympathy, and that I did not offer it.—His subject was the answer to prayer and the ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... Emily to the old man, the conflicting elements in his character, his fierceness—almost brutality—at times, his extreme gentleness at others, his rough treatment of every stranger who attempted to land on his shore, his tenderness over the child, all combined to pique my curiosity to know something of ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith

... by anybody whatever but your Lordship.' The Earl answers on the same day: 'If you yourself know any safe way for both of us, tell it me. There was a garden belonging to a Mousquetaire, famous for fruit, by Pique- price, beyond it some way. I could go there as out of curiosity to see the garden, and meet you to-morrow towards five o'clock; but if you know a better place, let me know it. Remember, I must go with the footmen, and remain in coach as usual, so that the garden ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... honest, greatly esteemed by every one. Neither pique nor passion nor petty feelings could ever influence her mind. She is the most angelic, good woman I ever met—she is one to whom one may complain, and be a bore. She has such ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... think myself justified in thinking the comparison not well founded. I don't say this out of pique, for Rousseau was a great man; and the thing, if true, were flattering enough;—but I have no idea of ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... sudden wave of hostility or pique, but a sentiment which had for years existed in the minds of both nations—a sentiment of mutual suspicion. The Englishman thought Germany was prepared to dispute with him the maritime supremacy of Great Britain, the German that England intended to attack Germany before Germany could ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... "I pique myself on this, that whether Bohemian or not, I will go nowhere that I am not wanted. Though,—for the matter of that, I suppose I'm not wanted here." Then Phineas gave him the message from his father. "He wishes to see me to-morrow ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... any of the little pique or resentment that might have been very natural. It was so that she would wish him to go about the business that was going to be so serious for all of them. But it gave her a new and startling flash of insight into ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... "Pique," he told her; "he couldn't care for her in the way he might for, well—you. As I said, he'll drop her on his next voyage to the East; he will leave her and probably never come back to Salem again. I hear that Ammidon, Ammidon and Saltonstone ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... to whom she was affianced, commanded her respect and admiration. Had it been that she had surrendered to her father's wishes because of pique that the handsome Heliumite had not taken advantage of his visits to her father's court to push the suit for her hand that she had been quite sure he had contemplated since that distant day the two had sat together upon the carved seat within the gorgeous Garden of the Jeddaks ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... whatever, and no more of dancing than is here common to the meanest peasants, who, by the way, dance with great zeal and spirit. So that I am instructor in my turn, and she takes with great gratitude lessons from me upon the harpsichord, and I have even taught her some of La Pique's steps, and you know he ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... and man at first were friends; But when a pique began, The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... his initial. The other translations are the writer's own. For these it would be superfluous to claim indulgence. This is sure to be granted by those who know their Horace well. With those who do not, these translations will not be wholly useless, if they serve to pique them into cultivating an acquaintance with the original sufficiently close to justify them in turning critics ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin

... charming things about that other blue gown just before he bade her good-bye three years ago. That was why she wore blue this night—to recall to Ian what it appeared he had forgotten. And presently she would dine alone with Ian in her husband's house—and with her husband's blessing. Pique and pride were in her heart, and she meant Ian Stafford to remember. No man was adamantine; at least she had never met one—not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... dangerous claims. And he liked to enter into the humours of a Court; to devote his brilliant imagination and affluence of invention either to devising a pageant which should throw all others into the shade, or a compromise which should get great persons out of some difficulty of temper or pique. ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... I thought everybody hears when a marriage is a failure. [Mournfully.] The fact remains; it was a terrible mistake. Poor Lucien! I don't blame him for my nine years of unhappiness. I engaged myself to him in a hurry—out of pique—— ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero

... in an adventure not uncommon in French-land. My apartment was numbered 48—by the way, who ever saw No. 1 in a hotel, or upon a watch?—and next door—that is, at No. 49—dwelt a very dignified-looking gentleman, always addressed as M. Jerome. I often take occasion to say, that I pique myself on being something of a physiognomist; and as I have been several times right in my judgment of character and position from inspection of the countenance, the occasions in which I have been mistaken may be set down as exceptions. M. Jerome ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... year a gradual change to lighter mourning may be made by discarding the widow's cap and shortening the veil. Dull silks are used in place of crape, according to taste. In warm weather lighter materials can be worn—as, pique, nun's ...
— The Book of Good Manners • W. C. Green

... compunction; I was fettered by no scruples. I wanted to steal you from her and marry you myself. But now that all this is changed, and that you of your own free will come and offer to make me your wife, I for the first time feel how wrong it would be of me to take advantage of you in a moment of pique and disappointment, and bind you for life to a nature which you do not really understand, to a violent and a jealous woman. Too late, when your life was hampered and your future spoiled, you would discover that you hated me. Arthur dear, I will not ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... attitude seemed to change. I could see her lovely shape brace itself up, as it were, beneath her robes and felt in some way that her mind had also changed; that it had rid itself of mockery and woman's pique and like a shifting searchlight, was ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... in making that only his design, I question if there be not many imperfections as well in those schemes and precepts he has given for the direction of others, as well as in that sample of Tragedy which he has written to shew the excellency of his own Genius. If he had a pique against the man, and wrote on purpose to ruin a reputation so well establish'd, he has had the mortification to fail altogether in his attempt, and to see the world at least as fond of Shakespear as ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... thoughtfully, it is a coincidence that we breathe; certainly it is a mighty coincidence that we speak to one another and comprehend; for these are true marvels. But what petty interlacings of human action so pique our sense of the theatrical that we call them coincidences and are astonished! That Julia should arrive during Noble's long process of buying a ticket to go to her was stranger than that she stopped to look ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... train.' And then she added, more prophetically than she knew, 'Mais, assurement, nous n'en resterons pas la.' No doubt her dislike of the Encyclopaedists and all their works was in part a matter of personal pique—the result of her famous quarrel with Mademoiselle de Lespinasse, under whose opposing banner d'Alembert and all the intellectual leaders of Parisian society had unhesitatingly ranged themselves. But that quarrel was itself far more a symptom of a deeply rooted spiritual antipathy ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... compared with those in "Lavengro" "the illusion in Borrow's narrative is disturbed by the uncolloquial vocabulary of the speakers." For Borrow's dialogues do produce an effect of some kind of life; those of Hindes Groome instruct us or pique our curiosity, but unless we know Gypsies, ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... its arms and the side of its face badly burned in consequence of its clothes having taken fire. As well as she could learn, the girl in whose charge she had left the children, and who, in the reduced circumstances of the family, was constituted doer of all work, had, from some pique, gone away in her absence. Thus left free to go where, and do what they pleased, the children had amused themselves in playing with the fire. When the clothes of the youngest caught in the blaze of a lighted ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur

... short stay, Emma had barely seen him; but just enough to feel that the first meeting was over, and to give her the impression of his not being improved by the mixture of pique and pretension, now spread over his air. She was, in fact, beginning very much to wonder that she had ever thought him pleasing at all; and his sight was so inseparably connected with some very disagreeable ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... sovereign,—apt pupil of his own in the divine right of monarchs to govern, and yet seemingly inspired by a keen sensitiveness to his people's wants and the spirit of the age,—could not endure his commanding ascendency and haughty dictation, and accepted his resignation offered in a moment of pique. He fell even as Wolsey fell before Henry VIII.,—too great a man for a subject, yet always loyal to the principles of legitimacy and the will of his sovereign. But he retired at the age of seventy-five, with princely estates, unexampled honors, and the admiration and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... sentiment of simple friendship. Her brother had told her all—the circumstances that led to his acquaintance with Hamersley; of the duel, and in what a knightly manner the Kentuckian had carried himself; adding his own commentaries in a very flattering fashion. This, of itself, had been enough to pique curiosity in a young girl, just escaped from her convent school; but added to the outward semblance of the stranger, by the sun made lustrous—so lustrous inwardly—Adela Miranda was moved by something more than curiosity. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... do wait a little. Don't, in a fit of angry pique over Maryon Rooke, go and bind yourself irrevocably to ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... suit you at all; and a public confession "I am a sinner, a sinner, a sinner," is such pride that it made me feel uncomfortable. When the pope took the title "holiness," the head of the Eastern church, in pique, called himself "The servant of God's servants." So you publicly expatiate on your sinfulness from pique of Solovyov, who has the impudence to call himself orthodox. But does a word like orthodoxy, Judaism, or Catholicism contain any ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... the unhappiness he had caused. She quite freed him from all intention of wrong. And after all, it might not be so bad. A mother's anxiety might exaggerate the danger; she would try and hope for the best. Change of scene must be tried; in the meantime, her fear was, that pique, or wounded pride, or disappointed affection might induce the unhappy child to—in short Mr Elliott must understand—. And Mrs Grove glanced expressively toward the wearer of the shining epaulets, with whom Arthur being unenlightened, ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... the animals, during the few months of his experience as assistant, had been altogether phenomenal, his chief felt a qualm of pique upon being warned against the big puma. He had too just an appreciation of Hansen's judgment, however, to quite disregard the warning, and he turned it over curiously in his mind as he went to his dressing-room. Emerging ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... Gabriel repeated with a very positive nod of her head. "He has not been the same man since the Lord Proprietor took over the presidency of the Court and he refused, upon pique, to be elected an ordinary member. Say what you like, a man cannot be virtual Governor of the Islands one day and the next a mere nobody without its preying ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... liked to get a little more light on the question, but Chairman Presson was ready for them and hustled them into the carriage. And on the ride to the station, during the journey by train, at the convention city, there were other matters uppermost besides a young man's pique. ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... long before we were near it. It was raining hard when we reached Eisenach station, and engaged a carriage to take us to the Wartburg. The mist, which wreathed thickly around, showed us only glimpses as we wound slowly up the castle hill—enough, however, to pique the imagination, and show how beautiful it ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... forgotten it," said she, with a blush which avenged my wounded self-love. Ironical pleasure at having been the subject of her pencil I could not indulge myself in expressing, as I did not care to enlighten Little Handsome. Any lurking pique was banished when Etty showed me, with a smile, the twilight view by ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various

... collar, stiff and starched as a Norman cap. Dr. Veron believes himself the key-stone of the Elysean arch, and that the weight of the government is on his shoulders. Look at him as he enters the Cafe de Paris to eat his puree a la Conde, and his supreme de volaille, and his filet de chevreuil pique aux truffes, and you would say that he is not only the prime, but the favorite minister of Louis Napoleon, par la grace de Dieu et Monsieur le Docteur President de la Republique. "Apres tout c'est un mauvais drole, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... was Archie's secret, here was the woman, and more than that - though I have need here of every manageable attenuation of language - with the first look, he had already entered himself as rival. It was a good deal in pique, it was a little in revenge, it was much in genuine admiration: the devil may decide the proportions! I cannot, and it is very likely that ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... than you puzzle me, Mr. De Gex," I replied with pique. "It would be so much easier if you would be frank ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux

... "And private pique," returned the major. "No matter! The end is the same. Justice shall be satisfied. To your steeds, my merry men all. Hark, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth

... the Rosinante of the circus, roused by the presence of the other horse, appeared to pique himself on a point of honour, and made an effort to keep up with his new companion. Thanks to the courtesy of the moustached cavalier, who continued to restrain the ardour of his fine steed, the two horses kept abreast, and the travellers were ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... was necessarily busy with his social duties to her guests, I was, after the first hurried greeting, left unattended for a time. Not being accustomed to such functions, I resented this as a covert insult and, in a fit of jealous pique, I blush to own that I took the revenge of a peasant maid and entered into a marked flirtation with Fred Currie, who had paid me some attention before my engagement. When Miles was at liberty to seek me, he found me, to all appearances, quite ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... the power which the Christian exorcists exercised over the possessed, so confidently and so freely, that we can doubt neither the certainty nor the evidence of the thing. They call upon their adversaries to bear witness, and pique themselves on making the experiment in their presence, and of forcing to come out of the bodies of the possessed, to declare their names, and acknowledge that those they adore in the pagan temples ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... governments had fallen out. The Venetians wanted the Pope to be the first in giving free passage through his frontiers, and the Pope insisted that the Venetians should take the initiative. The result of this trifling pique between the two governments was great hindrance to commerce, but very often that which bears only upon the private interest of the people is lightly treated by the rulers. I did not wish to be quarantined, and determined on evading it. It was rather ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... is unshoed, he is with nails up; it want to lead to the farrier." "Let us prick (piquons) go us more fast, never I was seen a so much bad beast; she will not nor to bring forward neither put back." "Strek him the bridle," cries the horsedealer, "Hold him the rein sharters." "Pique stron gly, make to marsh him." "I have pricked him enough. But I can't to make marsh him," replies the indignant client. "Go down, I shall make marsh," declares the dealer; upon which the incensed equestrian rejoins "Take care that he not give you a foot ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca

... wary of using our power of changing our chief magistrate when the welfare of the country does not require it. In the present election there has, doubtless, been much honest, warm, grateful feeling toward Jackson, but I fear much pique, passion, and caprice as it ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton

... —Alas, friend, here's the agent . . . is 't the name? The captain, or whoever's master here— 120 You see him screw his face up; what's his cry Ere you set foot on shipboard? "Six feet square!" If you won't understand what six feet mean, Compute and purchase stores accordingly— And if, in pique because he overhauls Your Jerome, piano, bath, you come on board Bare—why, you cut a figure at the first While sympathetic landsmen see you off; Not afterward, when long ere half seas over, You peep up from your utterly naked boards 130 Into some snug and well-appointed berth, Like ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... each other; we kept the great pace— Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place; I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, Then shortened each stirrup and set the pique right, Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit, Nor galloped ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... as Eric had got over his little pique, he made the first advances by writing a note to Upton, which he slipped under his study door, and ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar

... observing again the look of strength and grace upon him. However, she found her attention very much divided between tumultuous joyance in the mountain grandeur, bathed in the marvelously life-exciting air, and concern for the outcome of the day. If a faint suggestion of pique at the manner in which the horseman ignored her presence crept subconsciously into all her meditations, she did not ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels

... walked to the window and back again, and then began fumbling in his pockets for his knife. No, he did not want it; yes, he did. He would just cut the envelope and make believe he had read it to pique his wife; but he would not read it. Yes, that was it. He found the knife and slit the paper. His fingers trembled as he touched the sheets that protruded. Why would not Leslie come? Did she not know that he was waiting for her? She ought to have known that ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... would put a high price on himself, and pique her pride, as she was too much accustomed to worship, to be won by flattering it. He might have done that by paying attention to some one else: but he was too wise to employ so coarse a method, which might raise indignation, or disgust, or despair ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... Granville, "Never mind, Gerald," he pursued good humouredly "she is a splendid girl, and one that you need not be ashamed to own as a conquest. By heaven, she has a bust and hips to warm the bosom of an anchorite, and depend upon it, all that Cranstoun has said arises only from pique that he is not the object preferred. These black eyes of hers have set his ice blood on the boil, and he would willingly exchange places with you, at I honestly ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... resentment honestly delighted me. It was refreshing to know that the omniscient Paul Harley was capable of pique. ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer

... Cook failed to provide him with further facts, he was obliged to rely on would-be philosophical dissertations which it is to be hoped were not obtained from his father's notebooks. Young Forster says that the appointment was first of all given to his father in a spirit of pique on the part of Lord Sandwich, and then the order forbidding him to write was made because the father had refused to give Miss Ray, Lord Sandwich's mistress, who had admired them when on board the ship, some birds brought home from the Cape of Good Hope as a present to the Queen. In the ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson

... 'tis my Recreation; I serv'd a Woman so the other night, to whom my Mistress had a Pique. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn

... her child in a poor way. Often, as she passed through Rue Saint-Lazare, she would stop in front of a linen-draper's, in whose windows were displayed stores of rich baby-linen. She would devour with her eyes the pretty, dainty flowered garments, the pique bibs, the long short-waisted dresses trimmed with English embroidery, the whole doll-like cherub's costume. A terrible longing,—the longing of a pregnant woman,—to break the glass and steal it all, would come upon her: the ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... (six a.m., March 3rd) we followed the right bank of the Wady el-Khandak, which runs north with westing. Beyond it lay the foot-hills of gloomy trap leading to the Jebel el-Raydn, a typical granitic form, a short demi-pique saddleback with inwards-sloping pommel like the Pao d'Assucar of picturesque Rio de Janeiro. Here as elsewhere, the granites run parallel with and seaward of the traps. The Tuwayl el-Sk is nothing but an open and windy flat, where the Hajj-caravan ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton

... in the right-hand cage on the strange table. He then obtained a small monkey and put this animal in the left-hand cage, beside the cat. The cat, on the right, squatted on its haunches, mewing in pique and looking up at its tormentor. The monkey, after a quick look around, began to investigate the upper reaches of its ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... breeches and striped stockings; a white pique waistcoat, a gray coat, with large metal buttons, and his hair in powder. He must ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... Fortune Gobert, nick-named Pique-Vinaigre (Sharp Vinegar, to prevent mistakes), formerly a juggler, and a prisoner for the crime of passing counterfeit money, was accused of breaking the terms of his ticket-of-leave, ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... keep it as a pledge for the piece he was to write for her. The poet took the ring, and went home excited and wrought up to the resolve that nothing should interfere with the completion of his task. But it was the old story again—whims and postponements on Rachel's part, possibly temper and pique on his—until six months afterward, at the end of an angry conversation, he silently replaced the ring on her hand, and she did not resist. Four years later the compact was renewed, and although by this time De Musset had to all intents and purposes ceased to write, he struck ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... man at first were friends, But when a pique began, The dog, to gain some private ends, Went mad, and bit ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... story, that I'd heard enough of to suspect. Why she'd married the other man she couldn't explain herself, except that it was a woman's whim—I had stayed away and he had come the oftener—part pique and part the man's dare-devil fascination, I reckon; but a month had shown her how she really stood, and had shown him, too. Likewise, she saw the sort of man he was and the kind of life he lived. At last he got rough and cruel ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... he encountered taught him further fear. Even the cat became contemptuous of him, knowing itself dreaded. That splendid courage he was born with had faded to an extreme timidity. Before physical phenomena that pique most children to cunning endeavour, little Bean ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson

... Frenchmen are impulsive. He threw his arms about Tarzan and embraced him. Monsieur Flaubert embraced D'Arnot. There was no one to embrace the doctor. So possibly it was pique which prompted him to interfere, and demand that he be permitted to ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... that he has happy moments—or, perhaps, two soul-sides, one to face the world with, one to show his manuscripts when he's writing. You hint a fault, and hesitate dislike. That, indeed, is only natural, on the part of an old friend. But you pique my interest. What is the trouble with him? Is—is he conceited, ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... marvelous black hair that fell in two tresses over her shoulder to be caressed by the perfumed hands of the beautiful Onoto, who had heard her this evening for the first time and had thrown herself with enthusiasm into her arms after the last number. Onoto was an artist too, and the pique she felt at first over Annouchka's success could not last after the emotion aroused by the evening prayer before the hut. "Come to supper," Annouchka ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux

... farm and community. But the owner was a hard and ignorant white man, hating "niggers" only a shade more than he hated white aristocrats of the Cresswell type. He had sold the school its first land to pique the Cresswells; but he would not sell any more, she was sure, even now when the promise of wealth ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... jasmine-covered old house she had learned to love; and for a moment she felt as though she saw herself as those other women had seen her—the ignorant, frivolous, common little person whom Owen had married out of pique. ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... intelligently, and the silence betokened simply a stupid lack of interest. Moreover, he knew there was no such thing as a learned public. Kant's remark reveals a keen wit, and it also reveals something more—the pique of the unappreciated author who declares he doesn't care what the public thinks of him, and thereby reveals the fact that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... have pass'd, since, in thy prime, Plunging from off the shatter'd Blanche, o'erboard Amid the moonlight waves, twas thine to climb La Pique's torn side, and take the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... looked appealingly up at Latisan he was steadfastly staring past her. Her impulses were already galloping, but the instant prick of pique was the final urge which made the impulses fairly ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... last few weeks, has been most encouraging, though we must except from our commendation the recent speech of Mr. Stevens of Pennsylvania. There is a pride of patriotism that should make all personal pique seem trifling; and Mr. Stevens ought to have remembered that it was not so much the nakedness of an antagonist that he was uncovering as that of ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... sarcastic letters when your offerings are rejected. You may need the good-will of that editor some day. Although personal pique seldom actuates him, he may be frail enough to be annoyed when his well-meant efforts ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... little sharpened now, I could see that not by my young companions alone, but by every one of the four teachers, I was looked upon as a harmless little girl whose mother knew nothing about the fashionable world. I do not think that anything in my manner showed either my pique or my disdain; I believe I went out of doors just as usual; but these things were often in my thoughts, and taking by ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell

... is deserted. No sound penetrates to it. Even the very fire, in a fit of pique, has degenerated into a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... surprised had he known how often his eyes wakened into a tell-tale glow of delight and admiration, and how easily any one looking on might have fallen into the egregious error of construing his attitude into one distinctly loverlike. All this while she continued to pique his curiosity by a sustained reserve as ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... all others. A little later she came out with tears adding new lustre to her shining eyes, for the talk had been very earnest and heart-searching; but they were tears of happiness, for upon her gleaming curls now sat the square pique cap which was the visible sign that she had safely traversed the first stretch of the long, hard road. To be sure, she knew well that even this, the so dearly desired cap and pale blue dress which went with it, did not make her ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... knew that you would do what we desired at last, you might as well have done it at first," is a common nursery-maid's speech, which is well calculated to pique the pride of a half-subdued penitent. When children are made ashamed of submission, they will ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... that stamina necessary for his future Position, and repress a dangerous cerebral activity and tendency to give way to—He suddenly stopped, coughed, and absolutely looked embarrassed. Johnnyboy, a moving cloud of white pique, silk, and embroidery, had just turned the corner of the veranda. He did not speak, but as he passed raised his blue-veined lids to the orator. The look of ineffable scorn and superiority in those beautiful ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... Leach, going out to join a rich cousin, a sheep farmer in Canterbury. Smith was the son of a wealthy squire, with whom, it appeared, he had fallen out respecting some family matters, and in a fit of pique left his home and took passage to New Zealand. His funds were sufficient to procure him a second-class berth, but on representing matters to the captain, who knew something of his family, it was arranged that he should join us in the saloon, ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... farther in the affair at present, and yet Mr. Guthrie's declining the king's authority in matters ecclesiastical here, was made the principal article in his indictment some ten years after, to give way to a personal pique Middleton had against this good man, the occasion of ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... little before his father's death, Richard had taken the cross in conjunction with the King of France. So precipitate were the fears of that monarch, that Richard was hardly crowned when ambassadors were dispatched to England to remind him of his obligation, and to pique his pride by acquainting him that their master was even then in readiness to fulfil his part of their common vow. An enterprise of this sort was extremely agreeable to the genius of Richard, where religion sanctified the thirst ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... growth of hair hiding your face gives you an air of mystery and romance no woman could possibly resist. You're a perpetual puzzle, and to pique a woman's curiosity is the surest way to interest her. Why, there are plenty of women who would marry you simply to find out what is under all that hair. So ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon

... hope for the colonies, when suddenly an occurrence, which in this age could not appreciably affect the power of an English premier, snapped Grenville's sway in a few days. This was only the personal pique of the king, irritated by complaints made by the Duke of Bedford about the favorite, Bute. For such a cause George III. drove out of office, upon grounds of his own dislike, a prime minister and cabinet with whom he was in substantial accord upon the most important public matters ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... sharp debate upon the Confederate Government and its military policy. Rhett made a remarkable address, which should of itself quiet forever the old tale that he was animated in his opposition solely by the pique of a disappointed candidate for the presidency. Though as sharp as ever against the Government and though agreeing wholly with the spirit of the state army plan, he took the ground that circumstances at the moment ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... Greece. The modern Greeks love tales and fables, and have received them from the Orientals and Arabs, with as much eagerness as they formerly adopted them from the Egyptians. The old women love always to relate, and the young pique themselves on repeating those they have learnt, or can make, from such incidents as happen within their knowledge. The Greeks at present have no fixed time for the celebration of marriages, like the ancients; among whom the ceremony was performed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various

... jewelled hilts, made a thousand years or more ago, and a few years ago Crusaders' relics could be met with in the East. Many of these knives have silica blades, some of the handles being of jade. Those of grey jade are often pique with gold, others, of ivory, ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess

... western Europe again, then. Yes, she still possessed the Heine letter he required; only it was in her father's possession, and she had written to him to Russia to send it on. Her silence had been due to pique at the condition Lassalle had attached to acceptance of the mere friendship she offered him, to wit, that, like all his friends, she must write him two letters to his one. "Inconsiderate little creature!" he thought, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... wearing the pretty gown which Bumble knew she had brought in her suitcase, was garbed in the complete costume of a trained nurse. A white pique skirt and linen shirt-waist of immaculate and starched whiteness, an apron with regulation shoulder-straps, and a cap that betokened a graduate of St. Luke's Hospital, formed her surprising, but not at all ...
— Patty at Home • Carolyn Wells

... as they bowed to the commander.) "As I was saying to Barker, as matters stand in this regiment, some half a dozen at least of the men referred to as its 'representative officers' are apparently resentful of my arrest of Lieutenant Lanier, and attribute my course to pique, because he saw fit to show himself at the hop I declined to permit him as officer-of-the-guard to attend. You think, possibly, that because men like Captain Snaffle, Lieutenant Crane, and one or two of that set have been in consultation with me, the matters at issue are beneath your ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King

... others; but it soon tires of what is simply amusing or satirical unless some noble purpose be disclosed. The novels of former periods had interested by the creation of character and scenes; and there had been numerous satires prompted by personal pique. It is the glory of this latest age that it demands what shall so satirize the evil around it in men, in classes, in public institutions, that the evil shall recoil before the attack, and eventually disappear. Chief among such reformers are Dickens ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... nature which he trampled under foot—who, amiable, frank, friendly, manly in private life, was seized with the dotage of age and the fury of a woman, the instant politics were concerned—who reserved all his candour and comprehensiveness of view for history, and vented his littleness, pique, resentment, bigotry, and intolerance on his contemporaries—who took the wrong side, and defended it by unfair means—who, the moment his own interest or the prejudices of others interfered, seemed to forget all that was due to the pride of intellect, to the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... replied with an accent of finality but with a shade of pique: "The best proof that M. Kittredge would not be jealous of me is that he loves ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett

... his townsmen indulged this defect, and would not distress him by remarking on it, till another preacher of those parts, actuated by a private pique, came on one occasion to tantalize him, and said, "I have seen you in a dream; may it prove fortunate!" He asked: "What have you seen?" He replied: "So it seemed in my vision that your voice had ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous



Words linked to "Pique" :   resent, vexation, textile, offend, fabric, anger



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